Aversill

Mark, Talked it over with my players and we decided that's the way I think we're going to go. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm fairly sure it's going to solve a significant problem I'm having in my game.

Yes, it follows the characters around...and then it summons a creature that can't read OP but knows how to use Ctrl-F. This post is already over. CE--> Suffocation--> Trigger on an entangle that has the Extra Time Limitation for setup. I think Sir Viss's answer is probably what I want.

I buy the water pit for the same reason I would buy explosive runes or a sword falling from the ceiling; if it's a trap that I can trigger in combat then it's one of my powers and I should pay for it. Moreover, moving the floor to get someone to land in the pit is just a special effect for the trigger part of the change environment.

...which you can buy in hero builder under CE. Sir Viss, for the win!

I like your answer Lucius. What's the defense to CE damage? Power Defense? That would seem inappropriate.

If it helps, the spell power pools are included in the following file. Also included is the equipment pool I use. Different pool levels cost perks (the wish pool is, for instance, a 12 point perk). Also, cleric spells 1-7 (not quite sure why I did the others by alphabet and these by levels, but heh, what the heck..). Next up, the Monster Manual. Power Pool.hdc 1st Level Cleric Spells.hdc 2nd Level Cleric Spells.hdc 3rd Level Cleric Spells.hdc 4th Level Cleric Spells.hdc 5th level Cleric Spells.hdc 6th level Cleric Spells.hdc 7th level Cleric Spells.hdc

You can adjust power levels as needed. Obviously, hero builder makes most everything fairly easy to scale. The 55 point value stays stable with non-caster DCs in my game, which is what all of this is built for. The Side Effect is, generally, Distinctive Features: Spell Caster. In my games, at least, intelligent creatures recognize the potential threats of the spell caster fairly early on and will do a pretty good job of changing their tactics to account for the potential threat of a guy with a power pool (that's how I run magic). The items don't have the side effect because they don't necessarily call the character out as a caster.

A while back I started translating the 1st edition PH's wizard spells into hero. My assumptions are based around 1st level spells being equal to 55 points. Each additional level adds 5 points. In multiple part spells, I chose to break them up and link them through triggers. I probably could have also done "linked power" and in some cases I did. Obviously, you can do whatever you want with them. Since, I had the spells, I decided also to include stats for Scrolls, Rings, Potions, Wands, and Staves. I'm not sure that everyone would agree with my build on these items, but they are, at the very least consistent. Enjoy. Oh, two more things. I submit this to the community at large, so if you have suggestions, feel free to make them. I do this kind of thing a lot but I generally put it up on my obsidian portal game. So, if you like tables and updates and big hero builder files, you can...I don't know...check in there, drop my a line, favorite the campaign (Aversill, I'm monstro95968 over there). Second, I started playing Champs when it first came out so some of my design stuff might be a bit old school (read "dated"). If so, that's fine. That's just how I'd buy the power. A spells.hdc B spells.hdc C spells.hdc D spells.hdc E Spells.hdc F spells.hdc G spells.hdc H spells.hdc I Spells.hdc J Spells.hdc K Spells.hdc L Spells.hdc M Spells.hdc N Spell.hdc O Spells.hdc P Spells.hdc R Spells.hdc S Spell.hdc T Spells.hdc U Spells.hdc V Spells.hdc W Spells.hdc

I'm designing traps as if they were powers so that people with traps/inventor can make them. The current trap I'm working on is a pit trap that is filled with water. When people fall in, the lid shuts behind them and, wallah, they're at risk of drowning. I've got part of the pit worked out. It's an entangle that only takes damage from successful security systems rolls. The offensive power that simulates whatever it is that the pit does to people who are trapped within it should trigger on successfully entangling people. My question is how to simulate the drowning part. Suggestions?

Yeah, spamming non-combat. So, the characters recently faced a flock of stirges. The wizard who has a power pool that is difficult to change figures out, rightfully, that it is only difficult to change when you're going phase-by-phase. Making the 8 or less Power Roll to change a slot out of combat means that it really only takes 12 seconds to pull up a new power. He creates an image of a giant bleeding dinosaur (smell and sight)... Stirges taken care of. It costs Endurance, so long term End is a problem, but I've read that thing (the section on LTE) a bunch and it doesn't make that much sense. The power cost 4 End. He has a 10 Recovery. So, yeah, I think it takes up some LTE. This isn't a huge problem in my game, generally, but it does come to the point where a power pool wizard has a pretty good skeleton key going that I'd like to apply restrictions to. I've read some of the official FH stuff and I realize that this doesn't come up if you restrict spells in the way they suggest...but I'm not doing that. So, the question I'm asking is probably kind of complicated. Basically, the magic system in my game has power pools. So, the question becomes, 'how do you keep a character with a power pool from doing whatever they want outside of combat?" What systems do you put in place to restrict non-combat power usage since End really only restricts in combat usage and LTE isn't much of a restriction if a character's Recovery is high enough?

Aside from charges, let me get that out of the way, how do you keep players from spamming non-combat powers. First, I have this question generally. Simply, what do you do in your games, aside from charges, to keep players from utilizing non-combat powers non-stop. Second, I use power pools to handle magic which makes my spam problem even worse. Some powers, like healing, take care of themselves, but in order for my magic system to worse, I have to pretty much let things into power pools. This isn't a problem in combat (all spells cost End to keep up and carry , but in non-combat, it's a bit more complicated. One of my players cast a "Find the Path" spell with 45 active and...well...non-targeting, non-sense detect with 45 active points. But Endurance costs and side effects really aren't going to stop that character from casting that spell all the time, and I don't want to do the whole 1x/day thing from D and D. Any thoughts?

Thanks. I'm an idiot. I see the part about the focus now. So, if I have a power that is, say, Gremlin: Dispel against Variable Effect (foci), I can just destroy foci. That seems really powerful and fairly out of scope with the power's cost. Don't most games rely on foci? Is that because someone felt that the focus limitation wasn't limiting enough? I don't get it.

Also, it seems like we're just arguing the part where a persistent power either auto restarts or takes a 0 phase to restart. Assuming I'm wrong, and it's a 0 phase action, how does that equal a broken object since you can just...spend the 0 phase and restart the power through the focus. I'm confused.

Tasha, under your description, is dispel more powerful than drain? It sounds like you're saying that a drain will fade, but a dispel requires serious fixing of a foci, even though dispel costs half as much as the drain. Chris, you seem to be concentrating on the limitation thing, which is fine. Can you, however, show me where the opposite is said. The implication is that persistent powers turn themselves back on unless you yourself turn them off. You're suggesting that they also don't turn back on if dispelled. Where do you see that? I cannot find that in the power's description. I see the focus thing. That's... odd. It seems like dispel is two different powers. One shuts powers off, the other actually breaks the thing.

I can special effect anything; what are the rules? Line and verse: "A character doesn’t have to turn on a Persistent Power; it’s assumed to be on at all times, even when the character is unconscious. A character can turn off a Persistent Power if he chooses; the Power remains off until he turns it back on [it doesn't say, but I assume this is a 0 phase action]. Inherently Persistent Powers never cost END. If a Persistent Power has a Limitation that prevents it from working under certain conditions, when that condition ends or goes away the Power automatically “restarts,” unless (a) the Power has its own specific rules governing such situations (in which case apply those rules), or ( events during the period of non-functionality would prohibit automatic restart." Persistant Powers auto-restart. You can't buy a killing attack for 1d6 per 3 points. Also: Line and Verse: "The victim of a Dispel may “restart” the Dispelled power, but he has to start from scratch— he must perform any preparations again." (193) That's what the power does. The person whose power is dispelled need only start it up. Rusty Doom? RAW, it doesn't work. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen a bad build come from a game designer, Maybe its a holdover from an earlier edition, I don't know. But according to the rules, someone dispels your power, you need to start it up again, unless the power is persistent, in which case, it starts up as soon as the dispel ends. In later parts of the description, it clearly talks about dispelling CHA (especially defenses), which earlier it says you cannot do. Moreover, if you could, it would break the game. Who would buy a blast when you could get a 1d6 AVLD (Power Defense) for 6 points, which is what a Stun Dispel would become? Who would buy a Killing Attack when for 6 points you could get a 1d6 killing attack AVLD, Does Body (Body Dispel). You can dispel resistant defenses, but if you do, you need to make the dispel constant, or persistent. Note: dispelling non-persistant powers on things like robots WILL technically destroy those powers if (and only if) the robot doesn't have a program to restart the powers. The same is probably true for any automated function (traps in FH, for instance). I'm surprised there isn't a "keep paying End to keep the power dispelled" but I don't see that option. If there were, Rusty Doom would work. I don't have the Champions supplements you're talking about so I couldn't say.

Persistent powers auto-restart. That's on p 128, 6e v.1. The thing about destroying gadgets with a dispel is in the power's first paragraph fluff. It is true; you can destroy gadgets with dispel, but you need to buy the power to 0 end, and you need to buy it as constant and then persistent. As the target will never escape the dispel, whatever it was meant to do will never be activated. I would consider that to be overpowered for my games but your mileage may vary. Still, dispel+0 end+constant+persistent+variable effect+expanded effect. How much do you want to pay for this dispel? Even then, it doesn't seem like it really "destroys" the object. More like it permanently jams it. For full dismantling, I think you're either looking at Transform or Killing Attack.

I don't know how far you want to go in the overlap. Eventually, the points on the sheet are the points on the sheet. So, if you build a character and you call him a cleric or a paladin, it works so long as it fits your character's conception. That being said, if I were making a template or whatever for a fighting cleric, there would be a lot more emphasis on skills especially things like Knowledge (Extra Planar monsters, Extra Planar Places, Legends and Lore, The Will of the Gods, etc.), Diplomacy, Bureacracy, etc. I would probably be far more heavily invested in contacts and followers. Clerics know people. Both might have a resource perk, both might have access, but the cleric who fights once saved some tinmakers kid from the palsey so he's got favors and things like that. I don't want to go too far with this, but I would think that a paladin ought to be built with more emphasis on standing in the thick of it and not losing faith. Resistance, yes. Environmental movement (Intense Evil), yes. Improved Pre with a limitation: only for resisting (-1). He could still have diplomacy and all that, but if he can't walk into hell swinging, he isn't really a paladin.

I don't think Dispel will work. First off, you can't dispel characteristics. Second, dispel just forces the other guy (or thing) to turn the power back on. If you were to dispel the table, say, and we knew what the table's "powers" were, the dispel would turn them off and then, assuming they are persistent, they'd just turn back on again. It would be like, for a fraction of a second, the table didn't have the power to hold things up. Plus, the dispel would need variable effects and it would have to work on a number of characteristics. If you wanted to keep it going, you'd have to make it constant, then persistent, and at 0 End. It's a headache to go that route and because of the characteristics thing, I don't know if it would work. This seems like a classic transform to me. I would probably make it work against PD/ED rather than Power Defense, and I might argue that it has to be a severe transform (whichever's the highest) if you're hoping to take things apart that officially have powers. As for that being too powerful... it's kind of powerful, but then, if this is the character's thing then that's the character's thing. Superman's ability to have bullets bounce off his chest is kind of powerful too. Remember, foci have body = 2 x the number of powers bought through the foci. Dismantling Iron Man's suit is not easy using this method.

That works. In 4e, traps were often part of larger encounters. So, the characters face it along with other monsters (you're fighting four gnolls in a room full of pits). At that point, if you want to balance it, you need to know how many 'points' the trap is worth...unless it affects everyone (gnolls), in which case, it doesn't really matter.

I don't know what D and D you're talking about, but they've statted out traps since 3e. They have an experience value associated with them, they have all kinds of information associated with them. And Hero is more stat dependent than D and D, so yeah, I stat them out. I buy them as robots. It works. I have a basic shell of stats that gets a power (the trap). This is especially helpful if the trap is part of an encounter and I'm trying to balance things. Hero combat takes between 45 minutes and 2 hours. If you get faster than that, kudos. That's what the rest of us do. That's the same as 4e, but 4e isn't as detailed. 4e never gets less than 30 minutes in a balanced encounter. 1e and 2e are a lot different and go remarkably faster than Hero. As for healing, if a mechanic gets discussed by everyone in terms of the house rules they use to fix it, then it's broken. Obviously that's my opinion, but then...that's all these are. See previous forum posts about healing. No one that I've seen does it by the book. That being said, the Hero power Healing has about the same effect as 4e healing. Most people hate 4e healing. Along with the lack of magic, it's often cited as one of the more ridiculous points of the edition (4e is often called Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies). Of course, in most versions of D and D resurrection is more expensive (in terms of game resources) than it is in Hero. As for the disease mechanic: in 4e, it's the only means of tracking an effect that lasts longer than a long rest (a night's sleep). It isn't about diseases. It's a special effect. Impairment and disabling are the Hero version of long term damage. That being said, Body doesn't particularly heal fast in Hero so it doesn't really need a long term effect mechanic. Drains with a delayed return rate factors in there as well, as does Damage Over Time (though I haven't much use of it, so I couldn't say for sure).

It depends greatly on which D and D you're playing. Having just turned my 1st edition game into a Fantasy Hero Game. 1e D and D combat is a conga line. Characters and monsters attempt to whittle down HP. There's nothing you can do about that, and then the cleric heals the players who aren't dead. Later editions are a lot more like Hero because they come from a gaming environment that has partially been evolved by games like Hero. When I switched to Hero, I looked at 4th edition D and D to get ideas for normal people kind of abilities and I found that a lot of them already existed in the ruleset under things like Dodge or Presence Attack. In essence, 4e with its move, minor, standard, is the same as the 1/2 phase, 0 phase, 1/2 phase of Hero except that in Hero, the attack has to come last. You might think of Hero as kind of like 4th edition, except that the players can invent their own Powers, and also except that, in all but mental attacks, it's the defender who chooses whether they will defend with Reflex (DCV), Fortitude (High Con, High Stun, Damage Reduction), or AC (PD, ED, etc.). In general, Hero does combat better than D and D, and in the case of 4e, takes about as long. What it does poorly is balance. As soon as the heroes aren't fighting villains of equal point value, the whole system is just a bit shaky. How many 100 point monsters equal one 200 point character? Hero can't tell you. It also has problems with encounter balance for non-combat elements, which 4e does well (it's its one saving grace, in my opinion). So, for instance, in 4e, if the characters are expected to convince the troll shaman to let his prisoners go while fending off spider attacks, that can be accounted for in terms of a Skill Challenge. Hero should have that (all games should, it's a great mechanic), but it doesn't, and thus the narrative can get bogged down into a wargame if you let it (a problem with most games) with a couple of anti-climactic rolls. Traps are an absolute pain. You could run a trap as a robot, you could buy a dungeon as a base and buy the trap that way, you could buy the trap as a triggered offshoot of someone's powers, but no matter how you do it, it's hoaky. That being said, most people who played 3.5 and 4e were ambivalent (or downright antagonisitic) about how traps were used anyways, so your mileage may vary. I like them. I have to make do in either system, but for different reasons. Healing is a problem in Hero, in my opinion, but there are threads on here to help you fix it. Hero has a "disease" mechanic through impairment and disabling injuries, and partially through long term drains, but then someone has to buy the drain and it gets hoaky as with traps. In any case, because almost everything in Hero is built with the same tools (powers, limitations, and advantages), a mechanic like disease is both easy to produce and too easy to get rid of (see healing, regeneration, and power pools). At the same time, how often did the disease mechanic come up in D and D, really?

I think player input in a game is important. If my players don't want to play the universe I've designed then why are we playing it? The same is true about power levels. Saying, "man, I hate playing low pointers," might go along way to making a change, more than passive aggressively throwing character after character into the trash bin. Or it might force the GM to tell you why you're playing the low pointers. Maybe the game's so dang cool that it doesn't really matter what point total you're playing. That being said, normal people will stand and fight when running away means death, which is what you say keeps happening to your character. Moreover, I don't know, I design encounters around the power levels of the players. If one of them runs off, everyone else is out of luck. I would wonder if the other players at the table might be mad about having their characters die.

It depends. I run Fantasy Hero which is pretty much close to Champions. I figure out all the extra stuff I expect the characters to get for the campaign to work and then add that to about 250 to get where I want them to be. I keep Active's at or above 50 (or else mental powers don't work well). My mechwarrior tends to be gigantic with 250 point pilots and 650 point mechs (mech stuff tops at about 210 Active), but it's kind of a different game all to itself. I'm currently playing in a Champions game (D List superheroes) where I don't know the power levels, just a general description of my powers. It's fun.

Equipment Pool, man. Come to the dark side!

The only problem with images is that it won't make it through Darkness (it will counteract CE). Otherwise, what you're describing can be accomplished with images. The problem I was saying before was that if you make a dispel on the darkness (the obvious solution), you have to have rule calls in your favor. So, for instance, you're not dispelling the person, you're dispelling the effect... You can generally do that, but darkness is an area affect, so does the dispel have to be area to get this to work? If so, does it have to have enough area to cover the whole thing? Will left-over slivers of darkness act as shields against LOS? That seems kind of knit picky. If you are only dispelling the darkness so as to see the glowing magic objects, that's probably a -1/2 limitation, maybe less. Your mileage may vary. But if other things can be seen in the darkness because of the illuminated objects, it's probably a -1/4 or -0 limitation. Either way, as the images are pretty dang limited, it probably won't be a pricey power. I'd say one of the special effects of the thing is that if someone makes their perception roll, they shouldn't disbelieve the image, but should probably get what it is that they are seeing.